Adobe and Apple Developing Flash for iPhone

Adobe announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that it's not only continuing to work on bringing Flash to the iPhone, but it's teamed up with Apple.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Adobe chief Shantanu Narayen explains that the process is a little more complicated than simply depending on the App Store for approval.

"It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating," says Narayen. "The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver."

Narayen made no mention of the challenges that Adobe has to overcome, though the company’s long porting process is evidence of the difficulty involved. The Adobe executive said he was pleased with the progress of the project as far back as June.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had said the biggest obstacle with bringing Flash to the iPhone is the nature of the script itself. Currently, Desktop Flash too resource-heavy for such a small, mobile device, while Flash Lite is too-feature limited for what the iPhone has to offer.

In the meantime, Apple has advocated an HTML 5 replacement and is collaborating with companies like Mozilla and Opera to perform many of the same functions.